Hostilities resumed Friday when the California Democrat launched another salvo at the organization charged with accrediting and overseeing the nation’s law schools.

The battle began on March 31 when she fired off a letter to Stephen N. Zack, the ABA’s President, accusing the organization of enabling deceptive advertising by law schools.

Specifically, Sen., Boxer cited the ABA’s inaction while law schools tout the salaries of their top graduates as representative of what their average graduates earn. This paints an erroneously optimistic picture for would-be law students, she charged, one magnified by the fact that the schools make no distinction between income derived from full-time law practice and money garnered from employment in non-legal fields.

The law schools’ strategy is motivated by a desire to improve their positions in the U.S. News and World Report annual rankings and thereby attract more students.

After noting that the news magazine itself has requested “greater transparency from law school deans,” Sen. Boxer called upon the ABA to provide her with a summary of its plans “to implement reforms to ensure access to accurate and transparent information for prospective law school students.”

The senator supported her request with some very sobering facts. For instance, according to Northwestern University, at least 15,000 legal positions at major firms have been eliminated since 2008.

Also, the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that employment in the legal field in general decreased from 1.2 million in 2007 to less than 1 million in 2009.

Topping off the bad news is the projection that, each year, more than 44,000 law graduates will be competing for fewer than 30,000 new attorney positions.

Boxer’s initiative may have been prompted by an increasing number of law school graduates who are either unemployed or earning less than necessary to support themselves. Many are so disgruntled that they’ve taken to various Internet sites to vent their frustrations.

In his April 27 reply to Sen. Boxer, Zack did not provide the specific information she sought. Instead, he referred her to two informational ABA publications about law schools and legal careers.

PRESSING THE ISSUE

Although that omission is the newsworthy part of this saga, Zack gratuitously tossed in an oft-repeated lie that demands a response.

Here are his words: “…No one could be more focused on the future of our next generation of lawyers than the ABA and the legal profession for whom we speak.”

In fact, the ABA does not speak for the legal profession. It forfeited that role long ago when it veered from strict advocacy for the profession, and plunged into partisan politics.

Examples abound, beginning with its 1992 resolution supporting abortion on demand, an action so divisive that, within months, over 3,000 members resigned.

And last August, the organization officially endorsed the politically volatile effort to radically redefine marriage to accommodate same-sex couples.

Not that any of this would bother the liberal Sen. Boxer, of course. But it’s something that suggests a salt shaker every time the ABA says anything about anything.

If Zack thought that his sugary assurances would satisfy Sen. Boxer, he was wrong. Last Friday, she labeled as “troubling” the ABA’s failure to address the need for independent oversight of data supplied by law school deans to both the organization itself and publications such as U.S. News and World Report.

Noting that the editor of that magazine decried a “crisis in confidence in the law school sector” and that “a well-known law school admitted to knowingly reporting inaccurate data to the ABA for years,” Boxer wrote that “independent oversight must surely be a part of any reform proposal.”

That law school, by the way, is Villanova and the data inaccurately reported involved both Law School Aptitude Test scores and Grade Point Averages.

Next, Ms. Boxer scoffed at Zack’s reference to the two ABA informational publications. Calling on the organization to provide prospective students with “easy access to post-graduation employment and salary information,” she told Zack that “they should not have to search far and wide for information so critical to determining their futures.”

To that end, she urged the ABA to require law schools to post this information on their Web sites’ home pages and to include it in acceptance notices.

Sen. Boxer is right on all counts. Many students are making huge financial sacrifices to attend law school without having the slightest idea of what they’re getting themselves into.

Yes, a career in law can be both personally satisfying and financially rewarding.

The latter, however, pretty much requires either being at or near the top of one’s class, having solid legal connections, or having a wealthy benefactor willing to underwrite a massive advertising campaign for a spanking-new lawyer.

As for the former, well - yes - money isn’t everything. However, the bills still have to be paid and loans have to be paid off.

When the money coming in is less than what many blue-collar workers are making, nagging doubts are inevitable. And when that money is insufficient to make ends meet, personal satisfaction awaits finding some other job.

Any job. Anywhere.

[Daniel Leddy’s column appears each Tuesday on the Advance Editorial Page. His e-mail address is JudgeLeddy@si.rr.com.]